What exactly is Infocracy?

How decisions are made today

Mr Heniek lives in Town. He spent thirty years laying pipes throughout the area. He knows every one: where the ground is wet, where it is rocky, and which pipe will burst next. Ms Ola also lives here. She is an excellent hairdresser, but all she knows about pipes is that water comes out of them.

Today, when Town votes, Mr Heniek’s vote and Ms Ola’s vote count exactly the same. One each. That is how democracy works: every adult has one vote on every issue, every time. This was an enormous advance over rule by a king or whoever had the most soldiers. But it has one gap: it does not distinguish someone who knows from someone who does not.

And sometimes it works differently again. Often neither Mr Heniek nor Ms Ola decides about the pipe. A councillor does, knowing as little about pipes as Ms Ola but having won an election through persuasive speeches and money for posters. Or a company has a contact at the council. Then neither knowledge nor even a vote matters: power, money and connections do.

Remember: on the pipe issue today, a plumber’s vote counts as much as a hairdresser’s — and often less than the influence of someone with money or a position. This is the problem from which Infocracy begins.

How do we find out who really knows?

The first question that comes to mind is: surely everyone will claim to know? Ms Ola can say, ‘I know about pipes’, too. Then what?

Nothing happens just because someone says so. In Infocracy, nobody’s word is enough. Knowledge is verified, not merely claimed. It is checked in three steps. All three matter; without them, this might look like a trick.

Step one: show what you can do. Mr Heniek goes to what I call the Information Verification Office, or UWI in Polish. The name sounds imposing, but this is not a counter where someone stamps a form. It is more like a workshop: you come in and do what you know how to do, watched by people whose own ability has already been checked. A welder welds, and the joint is tested. Mr Heniek connects pipes, and someone checks for leaks. A master practitioner is assessed by another master, not an official.

Step two: show that you understand. Being able to do something is one thing; understanding why it works is another. So there is a conversation, too. Not a test with boxes to tick, but a conversation where someone asks, ‘Why use a wider pipe here?’, listens, then asks deeper questions until the limits of your understanding become clear. Millions of these conversations would be needed, so a specialised computer program conducts them: a talking machine. It selects and formulates questions about the chosen subject itself. It checks answers against the shared Tree of Knowledge. People around the world help decide what the Tree contains, and the community sets the machine’s rules. The conversation takes place in a recorded room where cheating is prevented.

Step three: the result is a number, not a stamp. The result is not ‘pass’ or ‘fail’. It is a percentage. Mr Heniek understands pipes at 91%. If Ms Ola tried, perhaps she would score 8%. This number is not a lifelong diploma: you can return at any time and improve it. It also gradually falls if the field changes considerably and you do not return to have your knowledge checked.

But wait. At the very beginning, nobody has been verified yet. Who checks the first Mr Heniek?

A good question. The honest answer is that the first scores are provisional. They draw on three things: existing qualifications and licences; evidence of completed work — those pipes really are under the street, and they really do not leak; and neighbours saying, ‘Heniek knows his trade.’ The first people verified assess the next. Every endorsement has someone responsible for it: if you vouch for a person who does not have the knowledge, your own ethical standing suffers. We will come to that shortly.

Remember: you demonstrate ability through practical work, then understanding through conversation; the result is a percentage you can improve. Nobody gains voting weight merely by saying ‘I know’.

The Tree where everything we know can grow

Third question: how does Town know that the pipe is an issue for Mr Heniek rather than Ms Ola? Must someone point to the right person each time?

No. The Tree does that. Imagine arranging everything people have ever learned as one enormous tree. The trunk holds the most general ideas. Thick branches grow from it: science, crafts, art and law. Smaller branches grow from those: plumbing from crafts, water supply networks from plumbing, and connecting cast-iron pipes to plastic pipes from water networks. At the end of each branch are leaves: specific, individual skills. I call this the Tree of Knowledge.

The assessment described earlier always concerns a leaf, never an entire branch. You do not sit an exam in ‘plumbing’ — that is too much at once. You score 91% in ‘connecting cast-iron pipes to plastic pipes’ and 84% in ‘calculating pressure in a network’. Higher up, on the ‘water supply networks’ branch, Mr Heniek’s score is calculated automatically as an average of his leaves. A weighted average: a leaf that more other things depend on counts for more.

Now for the pipe. Whoever submits the issue does not name people. They identify branches: ‘This concerns water supply networks, road construction and the town budget.’ The Tree finds everyone with verified knowledge on those branches, and those people’s votes carry the most weight on the issue. Mr Heniek’s part lights up brightly. Ms Ola’s barely does. If the issue were a hairdressing school, a different part of the Tree would light up.

Remember: you are assessed on a leaf, the branch score is calculated automatically, and an issue identifies branches, not people. Nobody has to choose who counts as an expert. The Tree identifies them.

Who stole the pipes?

Replacement work begins. New pipes are lying on the site. One night, three disappear. A week later, the culprit is known: a young man from Town sold them for scrap. He admits it. What happens now?

Today, the case would go to one judge in a robe, whose profession is judging everyone from pipe thieves to banking fraudsters. Infocracy has no profession of judge. A case goes to many people at once, sometimes a thousand, who determine the penalty together. But there are rules, so let us take it step by step.

Who can judge? Nobody is forced to participate, and nobody is selected by lot. Anyone who wants to can judge, provided they have first been through the same court themselves — more on that in chapter twelve. You join a case because you choose to.

First the documents, then an assessment. Participants receive the full case file: what happened, when, the evidence and the young man’s account. Before voting, they undergo an assessment of their understanding of this particular case. It is a conversation like a knowledge assessment: ‘Why do you think he acted alone?’ The result is a percentage: I understand this case at 85%. Someone who skimmed the file and scores 20% can also vote, but their vote carries very little weight. A participant’s judicial voting weight is their ethics score multiplied by the square of their understanding of the case.

The penalty is an average. Town already has an agreed schedule of offences: theft of shared property carries a specified range of penalties. Each participant proposes a penalty within that range and explains why: ‘He admitted it, returned the money, and this is his first offence; I choose a lower penalty.’ The final penalty is a weighted average, with greater weight given to people who understand the case better and have stronger ethical standing. No single person decides another’s fate.

Nobody knows who is judging whom. Participants appear under numbers and do not see the young man’s name; he does not see theirs. This is intended to prevent leniency towards a cousin or harshness towards someone disliked. People may reveal their identity if they choose, but they do not have to.

Remember: willing participants judge anonymously after an assessment of their knowledge of the case; the penalty is the weighted average of their votes. This is the same court that can reduce the ethics score described in chapter five.

Ms Basia and her pipe fitting

During replacement, the old cast-iron pipe will not connect properly to the new plastic one. Ms Basia, who has worked in a workshop all her life, invents a fitting: a ring with a rubber insert that solves the problem. It works. What does she gain from it?

Today, she would have two routes. Sell the idea once for a single sum, or patent it: obtain a legal right preventing others from making similar fittings without her permission for twenty years, and earn money by controlling access. Both routes have drawbacks: the first for Ms Basia, the second for everyone else.

In the economy I call Informatium, there is a third route. Ms Basia describes her fitting in six parts — what it is, how it works, its materials, its uses, the skills required and what can go wrong — and adds it to the Tree of Knowledge as a fruiton the ‘pipe connections’ branch. She also identifies its roots: the earlier ideas she used, because nobody invents something from nothing. People with knowledge on that branch check two things: whether it works and whether it is new. From then on, anyone can make Ms Basia’s fitting. Nobody forbids them.

But every timesomeone makes the fitting, anywhere, a small payment flows to Ms Basia. Not for owning something, but because her idea was useful. If, two years later, Mr Tomek improves it and adds his own fruit with a root leading to her fitting, each use of the improved version pays both Tomek and Basia. Money flows down the roots to everyone whose ideas the new design depends on.

Remember: income comes from being useful, not from forbidding use. The idea is on the Tree for anyone to use, and its creator receives a small payment for each use, over the years.

How to get there

One last question before the biggest one: if this sounds so good, why does it exist nowhere? How could it begin without a revolution or turning everything upside down?

Imagine a bridge from today’s world to Infocracy. It has three crossings, and people choose when to cross. I call it the Great Court, although it is not a court with a dock for defendants.

Crossing one: show what you can do. Voluntary. You choose which leaves to be assessed on. Crossing two: show that you understand. Also voluntary: the conversation described in chapter four. Crossing three: account for how you have lived. This is required of anyone who wishes to become part of the new system. It is the court from chapter eight, but this time you are being assessed. People consider your past actions against the shared schedule of offences, producing your ethics score. Most people leave with 1.00, because most have not stolen from anyone. Once you have passed through, you can judge others.

Nobody forces anyone across this bridge. People cross when they see that life is better on the other side: first a few, then neighbours, then Town. Parts of the system are introduced only when enough people have crossed: small decisions first, larger ones later, then production facilities. There is no single day when the old world ends. There is a long bridge with more and more people crossing.

Remember: Infocracy is reached by crossing a bridge voluntarily, one person at a time, rather than through revolution. It begins with enough people verifying what they know and accounting for how they live.

An honest conclusion: what is still missing

I promised to be honest, so let me finish honestly. First, the most important point: Infocracy does not exist anywhere. In no town and no country. Mr Heniek, Ms Ola, Ms Basia and the young man who stole the pipes are fictional. This is one person’s proposal, developed for fourteen years and still revised whenever a better solution emerges. Treat this page as a house plan, not a photograph of a finished house.

There are questions I cannot yet answer fully, and I do not hide them:

• Who oversees the machine? The community votes on proposals to change its tasks, powers and limits. The machine formulates questions itself. A master practitioner who certifies someone’s skills is responsible for their word: a lie may cost them income from that skill and ethics points.
• What about someone who does not want to cross the bridge? Are they a second-class citizen? What about someone unable to take assessments because of illness or age? This is the most serious unresolved issue in the proposal.
• Who can see your scores? Your neighbour, a shop, an employer? The source materials discuss transparency without defining the boundary of privacy.
• Is this just social credit in more attractive packaging? My answer is no: no computer calculates your ethics score from your daily life. Only a public judicial process conducted by people can change it, using an agreed schedule of offences. But I understand why the question returns, and it should.
• Where does the first Town come from? The bridge is described. Its first plank is not yet in place.

One more thing: this page is deliberately simplified. The website explores these mechanisms in more detail, with interactions, formulas and exceptions. If something here seems too easy, you may be right. Explore the detailed explanation and test it.